A Modern-Day Roman Galley

 A Modern-Day Roman Galley

There are two ways to control people, one way is pain, and the other is pleasure. The ancient Romans employed both techniques, we in the United States tend to employ the latter. 

While the Romans certainly used the whip and exile and prisons, and of course forcing people to fight lions, and tigers and bears in the games; they also knew that the masses needed both bread and entertainment. One of the qualifications for high office in Rome was enough wealth to contribute to entertainment – one must keep the populace satiated with distraction and pleasure. 

Our own system is more refined than ancient Rome, and exquisitely subtle. In our system we get the people to pay for their own entertainment, to purchase their own opium, and if they can’t pay for it, we will allow them to borrow money to purchase the pleasure and give them the privilege of paying exorbitant interest. One need not be rich to hold high public office in the United States, though one can certainly become rich while doing so. 

So it occurred to me the other day, when watching a television ad for a cruise line, that what I was really watching was a Roman galley, a slave ship. The difference, of course, is that the men at the oars of the galley in ancient Rome knew that they were slaves and desired freedom; while the patrons of the cruise ship, which had the equivalent of a Six Flags park within and without, thought they were free and would no doubt take offense at the suggestion they were not.

This reminds me of the religious people saying to Jesus, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone” (John 8:33). All we need do is to read the Declaration of Independence if we have any doubts, “We are George Washington's descendants and have never been enslaved to anyone.” (Unless, of course, our ancestors were enslaved Native Americans or Africans, then the fiction might be harder to swallow.)

We are a people controlled by pleasure, and we think we are free because we get to pay for the pleasure. Sadly, this therapeutic imprisonment has permeated the professing church, and woe to the pastor who points us to the Cross of Christ and the cruciform life, woe to the fool who proclaims Mark 8:34 – 38 and expects his or her congregation to take discipleship seriously. Better to remain satiated slaves, better to serve Egypt than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

After all, we are citizens of the United States, we are of the church of the United States, and we have never been in slavery to anyone. 

O dear friends, we are called to be the sons and daughters of the Living God and citizens of His heavenly Kingdom (Phil. 3:30). 

“For we have not received the spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but we have received the spirit of sonship as sons [and daughters] by which we cry out, 'Abba! Father!'” (Romans 8:15). 

The path to freedom in Christ begins with the confession that we are slaves.